K-12 Education
Massachusetts Energy Net Positive Bloom-Shaped School Takes Shape
Trade partner bid packages for Lexington High School project are set to be released in April
The new Lexington High School in Lexington, Mass., will accommodate 2,395 students and be powered by 4 MW of rooftop and ground mount solar panels.
The first phase of the energy net positive Lexington High School replacement in Lexington, Mass.. is scheduled to start construction this summer, with trade partner bid packages to be released in April. The 507,000-sq-ft, four-story building will consist of three connected L-shaped buildings that Lorraine Finnegan, CEO of Cambridge, Mass., architecture firm SMMA, calls a “bloom” configuration.
“What I think is really fun about this project is it speaks to every neighborhood around the site," she says. "We have three primary entrances....and so it really does speak to each community that it faces.”
The three building wings will surround a central commons to include a dining hall and serve as the “heart" of the school that will accommodate 2,395 students and be powered by 4 MW of rooftop and ground mount solar panels, with enough excess energy to add to the grid.
This project involves building on existing athletic fields. Once that is constructed, the existing building will be torn down and fields that were displaced as part of the project will be replicated.
Mike Burton, a partner at Dore + Whittier, the owner’s project manager, calls the building replacement process the “flip flop," noting that “most of the projects we do [are] exactly what we're doing here, which is, in some cases, building a few feet away.”
The location of the new building relative to the existing one does have one pinch point in that they are only about 18-20 feet apart. Burton said mitigations will be put in place to make sure building occupants are disrupted as little as possible during construction.
“The site itself is a little bit challenging with the geotechnical conditions and some wetlands, but it's all solvable,” he said. The firm will work with the local conservation commission to obtain an order of conditions with rules in place to ensure wetlands are protected.
“We're navigating pathways through the wetlands to provide educational opportunities for outdoor classrooms, so environmental science classrooms can go out there and [observe],” Burton says.
The all electric building will use a hybrid HVAC system with both ground source and air source heat pumps.
“This is a progressive town educationally,” said Finnegan, “also ... with respect to sustainability.”
SMMA will generate designs until May 2027 but is doing early-release packages so certain scopes of work can begin construction sooner. Turner Construction will work with the project team to procure subcontractors. The site enabling package will be issued in April, and by September, the team will start foundations and steel work.
The final guaranteed maximum price is set for spring 2027, with construction completion expected by December 2030.
